Please don't laugh at me..I need help with images

[courtjester]

Here's the deal. I have been noticing you all putting background images on your sites. If I am designing a website, what size should the background picture be? I was using 800x600. Is this what most people use? Also, I have one more question about pictures for websites. I save EVERYTHING as a Web Safe JPG. Is there a better way, or is this the best? Thanks.

[Webforumz Staff]

Hi Kulegamr,

Ok firstly, I haven't actually seen many sites on here that use images for their main page backgrounds. Most use backgrounds for table cells and there's a good reason for that. A visitor's screen and therefore the size of the browser window, could be anything, so you can't just expect a background image to be completly seen or repeating, depending on the size of the monitor the visitor is using.

It is better to put backgrounds to table cells. You can make images span a whole table, by putting a table in a cell and putting the background image to the cell. Of course we should all soon be using CSS, so naughty me!

The standard definition of 'web safe' is 255 colours (I think?!). If that's what you're using, then there's no need. If you want to have a lot of colours, which you are free to do nowadays, then use a JPEG but make sure you compress it enough so it just displays well, without breaking up.

If you want to use websafe colours, then use a GIF - A GIF will store any 255 colours from your image and it's A LOT smaller than a JPEG.